Connecting through Content
If the major characteristic of Web 1.0 is to connect people to content, than Web 2.0 allows people to connect with other people. Web 3.0 connects content to people, and Pearltrees is a great way to see how this works.
Most things about Pearltrees are backwards, although still intuitive (because of a cool user interface). You connect your pearl to other people's pearl's, but the search is not done on keywords or tags, rather it is done by matching URLs. So if I had picked a page that looked at the characteristics of Labradoodles (cross beetween Labradors and Poodles), Peartrees would look for others with that URL and connect us in a social graph. Through this I might find a dog trainer that focuses on Labradoodles as their URL/pearl is connected to yours (Figure 1).
Figure 1 - Get connected with Pearltrees
Pearltrees, although currently in free beta, is much easier to use than it is explaining what it is and what it is good for. Figure 2 below shows the first screen you see when you go to log into Pearltrees. Options and instructions on the left and pearls on the right. If you sign up for a pearl, you can also begin creating your own Pearltrees based on your interests and those with common interests.
Figure 2 - The Initial Pearltrees screen
Although Pearltrees is currently public while in free Beta, a private version will be available when Pearltrees goes live next quarter.
I could see Pearltrees as a great way to run an online dating site or any process that requires sorting and matching. Unlike other social lnetworks like Facebook, where you look for people and then find their interests through their profile, Pearltrees not only has a more graphical interface but matches content (URLs) first and through that content you can find other people with the same interests. It is a very democratic way to organize the web. In Figure 3 you can see that you can find groups or sub-groups, and can even find a folder (URL).
Figure 3 - Finding sub groups and folders in Pearltrees
Pearltrees allows you to manipulate Web URLs like you would documents, and instead of keeping your URLs in a bookmark list (I have never organized mine, but that is another story) or in a common keyword/tag social site like Digg, or Delicious it allows you to create your own Web structure created from common content in the pearls. It is much easier to do it than to explain it.
Pearltrees takes a very different approach to "social" than Facebook does, but I see them as synergistic rather than competitive and an excellent acquisition for Facebook. Pearltrees allows you to directly connect to some social networks like Twitter and Facebook, and I expect there will be more "social" connections by the time it is out of beta. My best suggestion is to play with it and see if it fits your style, or the way you would like to look at things on the Web as well as connecting you to others. Right now you can only connect to groups and sub-groups, and not specific individuals.
However, the private version of Pearltrees would be a great tool for an online dating site. Just imagine, rather than creating a profile with your same boring drivers licence picture, you could connect to URLs that have a picture of you (Flickr, Photobucket, etc.) and as you tagged pages that showed your interests, you could see who else saw the same URL and maybe had the same interest.
There is no embeded chat mechanism right now, but I imagine if this application is ever built that chat will be included as well as presence detection (maybe the circle line around the object turns bright green). It could also let you know the number of URLs you have that match other peoples. Anyway, while waiting for an application like this, why not go play with Pearltrees (its free) and see who you connect with through your content and interests?
Comments
David,
Thanks for sharing. This looks interesting.
Hey Dave, thanks for pointing out Pearltrees, I'll check it out.
Something to consider along similar lines - tools that filter and auto-curate connections to surface interesting and relevant content and people. The idea is that when a user explicitly sifts and chooses what he or she thinks is relevant is swayed by the selection process itself. So, an intelligent, automated algorithm that identifies connections based on behavior and pre-existing connections (like links in a Twitter or FB update stream) will actually be a more accurate representation of who we are and what we like, than who we "think" we are and what we "think" we like or want to know.
For instance, companies like www.my6sense.com and www.Genieo.com surface relevant web content for consumers based on their actual surfing behavior without requiring any explicit input. (Both of those companies just presented at DEMO Spring 2010.)
www.HourlyPress.com monitors urls shared on Twitter to identify the most newsworthy articles about the news industry - without any input from tweeters or readers.
Of course, it's always useful to be able to create an explicit filter for a particular purpose, but wouldn't it be cool if Pearltrees used existing info and behavior to automatically surface the most interesting and useful connections?
Cheers,
Monica
Monica,
Interesting take on my comments. I really did not think about it as a way to look at consumer behavior, but rather look at interactions and the value that comes out of them. In thinking about this I have posited that an interaction (between 2 people) is the atomic unit for collaboration. If we were able to measure the value each derived from the interaction, it would be different for each of them. What I like about Pearltrees is not only the interface, but also the way it can connect your to others, some that you know, and others that you don't but are just connected through the topic.
Pearltrees also had a new announcement about something called "SuperEmbed" this week where you can easily organize and share web pages, links,etc. into what they call a "tree" and allowing you to embed that Pearltree in your blog or website, so it is a way to aggregate what you have discovered about a topic with others. I need to talk with Pearltrees again, figure out how to use this tool, and embed information that I have discovered about collaboration into this blog. I do try to walk the talk, just don't always have the time to test everything.
Didn't know about this social app. Thanks for the tip, I think I'll give it a try.
Thx a lot for this cool post! Pearltrees and Facebook take indeed different approaches to "social". Facebook build links between friends, drawing the "social graph". Pearltrees allows everyone to manage, discuss and communicate their interests on the Web, thus creating links among people's interests and drawing the "interest graph". (disclosure: I work at Pearltrees^^)